Grim Sorcery

Like sorcery but grim, and northern…

The rules for Grim Sorcery are constantly subject to review. This is because I’m trying out various things to get the feel I want for magic in the Grim North, that Conan-risqué Sword and Sorcery vibe that is essentially missing from most versions of Dungeons and Dragons if we’re going RAW. 

In the Grim North we want magic to feel like something ancient, powerful and if we’re honest; something us mortals should probably leave well enough alone. Player characters are not generally renowned for their sensible approach to such things however so, let’s face it, they’re going to steep themselves as deeply as humanly possible in the darkest, most foul sorcery they can find. 

Good. 

So grim sorcery has spell lists. Each relates to one of the much vaunted (admittedly, only by me) thousand dead civilisations that the Grim North is built atop the ruins of. Each long dead culture has its own ancient language in which its magic is written and if you speak that language then you can learn the spells of said ancient civilisation. Hence we don’t need artificial constructs such as Read Magic spells; if you can read Sepulchral, the grave tongue of accursed Xidia then you can acquire the secrets of those ancient death magicians. Although clearly there is some small risk attached. Folk can’t simply go stomping all over the Grim North turning up forbidden secrets and expect those secrets not to stomp back. 

So it might be that OSR D&D isn’t going to cut it or maybe it will. We’re playing online where simplicity of rules seems to be king. So keeping it sorcerous but simple is probably the way forward for now. One of the players has rolled up a wizard as his reserve character do we’ll see how it works out in the game should that come to pass. Theorising will only get us so far after all, the proof is in the play.